STOP MARKETING TO DEVICES AND START MARKETING TO PEOPLE

STOP MARKETING TO DEVICES AND START MARKETING TO PEOPLE

Every marketer knows that consumer attention is fragmented across devices: smartphones, tablets, computers, TVs—to name just a few. Nielsen found that Americans now own an average of four digital devices, with the average consumer spending 60 hours a week consuming content across them. According to Google, 90% of consumers use multiple devices to accomplish online tasks, and 65% of consumers begin online shopping activities on a smartphone, while continuing on other devices. The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) means that there will be even more internet-enabled devices that consumers may use along their paths to purchase.

Consumers, of course, do not know or care about any of these strategies or tactics. They simply make decisions using whichever device is best-suited for their search at a particular moment. As the number of devices multiplies at a rate that far outpaces growth in the number of actual consumers, marketers must now realize that they have to market to people, not devices.